“But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you” (1 Peter 5:10). Though mention is made frequently in the Scriptures of the grace of God and of His being gracious, yet nowhere but in this verse do we find him denominated “the God of all grace.” There is a special emphasis here that claims our best attention: not simply is He “the God of grace,” but “the God of all grace.”
God’s people personally receive constant proof that He is indeed so; and those of them whose thoughts are formed by His Word know that the benefits with which He daily loads them are the out-workings of His everlasting design of grace toward them. But they need to go still farther back, or raise their eyes yet higher, and perceive that all the riches of grace He ordained, and of which they are made the recipients, are from and in His very nature. “The grace in His nature is the fountain or spring; the grace of His purposes is the wellhead, and the grace in His dispensations, the streams,” says Goodwin. It was the grace of His nature that caused Him to form “thoughts of peace” toward His people (Jer. 29:11), as it is the grace in His heart that moves Him to fulfill the same. In other words, the grace of His very nature, what He is in Himself, is such that it guarantees the making good of all His benevolent designs.
As He is the Almighty, self-sufficient and omnipotent, with whom all things are possible, so He is also an all-gracious God in Himself—lacking no perfection to make Him infinitely benign. There is therefore a sea of grace in God to feed all the streams of His purposes and dispensations that are to issue there from. Here then is our grand consolation: all the grace there is in His nature, which makes Him to be the “God of all grace” to His children, renders certain not only that He will manifest Himself as such to them, but guarantees the supply of their every need and ensures the lavishing of the exceeding riches of His grace upon them in the ages to come (Eph. 2:7).
Look then beyond those streams of grace of which you are now the partaker to the God-man, Jesus the Anointed One, who is “full of grace” (John 1:14), and ask for continual and larger supplies from Him. The straightness is in us and not in Him, for in God there is a boundless and limitless supply. I beg you (as I urge myself) to remember that when you come to the mercy seat (to make known your requests) you are about to petition “the God of all grace.” In Him, there is an infinite ocean to draw upon, and He bids you come to Him, saying, “open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it” (Psalm 81:10, ital. mine). Not in vain has He declared, “According to your faith be it unto you.”
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